Living With Scars
by Anti-Kryptonite
Summary: Rumplestiltskin returns from Neverland broken, without magic, and convinced the only selfless thing to do is to let Belle go.


A/N: Written for my 150 Followers Promptathon on tumblr! Thanks to piccolascintilla for the prompt! Hope you all enjoy!

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

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Living With Scars

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It's not fair, he thinks as he watches Charming approach, careful and solicitous in his movements, slinging Rumplestiltskin's arm around his neck and helping him up from the bunk he's laid in and bled in two times too many. He's paid a high price to rescue his grandson – _their_ grandson – from Pan, an even higher one to return from Neverland to a town hidden by the most powerful magic outside of true love. They all have – Hook having paid the ultimate price in the midst of one of his double-crosses (or was it a triple-cross that time? Rumplestiltskin lost count), Snow quiet and sober from shepherding all the weeping children into the skies, Regina small and fragile after her first glimpse of Henry on Pan's island (just what she saw, she refuses to divulge, and Rumplestiltskin knows enough of Neverland's creator to think her decision wise), Emma shaken and bruised from the amount of magic torn from her to rip through worlds, and Charming…well, Charming paid with his life, too, and it was only luck that he'd been stabbed while Rumplestiltskin still possessed his magic.

His magic.

Rumplestiltskin fancies he can still feel it, a phantom thrill of power coursing through his veins. He imagines that if he lifts his hands and gives a flourish, he will feel the damp dryness of smoke as his will reshapes reality. He pictures it in his mind as he hangs from Charming's strong grip, half-carried like an infant up from the hold to the deck, bright with Earth's sunlight and blustery with Maine's chill. He pictures it, smoke and power and _life_, but that is all it is.

A picture. A fancy. A product of imagination.

His magic is gone, sundered from him as he'd arranged for the peoples of their native world to be sundered from the Enchanted Forest. Magic comes with a price, and he has paid it, paid it at every turn. He has lost his son (twice over) and his conscience (tossed into the wind with the ashes of Milah's heart) and his idealism (ripped from him in the moment Cora ripped her own heart from her chest) and his heart (stolen with a chipped cup, over and over and over again) and before it left, Pan and his magic took what little remained of his strength, his health, his ability to act like a man rather than a weakling or a monster. A coward.

Magic has taken everything from him, and now he is left a weak, shriveled husk of a man (the echo of a man, the shadow of something that once was but now has passed), helpless to walk on his own, short of breath, scarcely able to see in any illumination brighter than a few candles, with hands that shake and hair turned silver and skin pierced and shredded by Pan's sadistic vengeance.

Charming's strength and vitality, plastered against his side, only make his own frailty seem even more painfully apparent. Unfair, he thinks again, and yet that's the way life goes, and maybe it is fair. After all, Charming has never stained his hands with his own wife's blood, and though he let go of his child, too, he did so out of nobility, hope, and selflessness. He is a picture of everything Rumplestiltskin could have been, might have been—and isn't.

The maudlin thoughts fade away, though, useless to protect him from the sight of the blurry blue-coated figure standing at the very edge of the pier, pressing forward. Rumplestiltskin lets his eyes flutter closed, lets his muscles relax for just an instant as he imagines her. He can see her so clearly, eyes alight with hope and joy and relief. And love. For a monster. For a husk. For a shadow. He can recall the texture of her dark curls, the curve of her cheek against his palm, the softness of her lips, the warmth of her body pressed so closely against him, nothing held back as she embraces him.

His memory has always been good. Even without magic, that hasn't changed.

"Belle," Charming says, aware of just how poor Rumplestiltskin's sight is now. "She's waiting for you."

And Rumplestiltskin does not think he has ever heard anything so tragic in his entire life.

Charming hastens his steps as if anxious to be relieved of his burden (as if knowing that Rumplestiltskin wants nothing more than to be reunited with the woman he loves and thought he would never see again) and he hears their steps turn hollow and loose as they move from the ship's deck to the gangplank. Rumplestiltskin is sure that Regina and Emma and Snow and Henry are around somewhere, maybe already on the dock, maybe making sure the _Jolly Roger_ is properly berthed, but he cannot see them and all he can hear is the anxious, hoarse rattle of his own breathing. His hand tightens to a painful grip over Charming's shoulder, but the younger man doesn't flinch.

"Almost there," he reassures him.

But Rumplestiltskin doesn't need the Prince to tell him, because lighter, freer steps are suddenly loud and quick across the gangplank and then he is surrounded by _Belle_. He cannot see her, can see only blue and chestnut and flesh colors, but he can smell her (books and roses and a hint of something more sober, more real, like ink or dust, something that reminds him she _is _real no matter that she seems too good to be true) and his free arm can feel the curve of her wrist in his quaking embrace, and he can feel her tears (salty and hot) against his neck.

"Rumple," she sobs, and he cannot help but lean into her then, no matter how many times he promised himself he wouldn't (wouldn't burden her, wouldn't tie her down, wouldn't expect too much).

"Belle," he murmurs in the raspy whisper that is all that is left of his voice (and he would tear Pan to pieces, in that moment, for all he has taken from him, if he could).

"You're alive," she murmurs, over and over again, and he feels the echo of it in his own head (because maybe he left her where he hoped she would be safe, and maybe he trusted her to be able to handle the Home Office, and maybe he's the one who's half-dead, but Bae is gone and Belle is all he has and everything he loves is always, _always_, taken from him, so of course he fears it at every turn).

Charming gives them a moment (his awkwardness radiating outward from him, even to Rumplestiltskin's shattered senses) before he clears his throat and shifts a bit. "I'll help you home," he offers.

"No!" Rumplestiltskin counters quickly. "My shop. Take me to my shop."

His shop is all that's left to him, after all. The magical artifacts he's collected over centuries that are now dead to him—but still useful because bargaining with them is all the power he retains—and the wheel he uses when he wants woolen thread rather than golden, and the place he first saw Belle return to him. She was locked up, stolen from her life, kept hidden, a knife perpetually over her throat, and all because of him. If he goes home, to the house where she stayed with him, where he cooked her breakfast and held her during her nightmares and finally let himself think of a future with Belle in it…well, if he goes there, he will want that same future. He will talk himself into clinging to her and holding her to a promise of forever that's long since been disavowed. But at his shop, he will remember what happened to her because of his love for her, and he will be able to be strong and brave and selfless (as noble as a monster can ever be) and he will do what must be done.

Belle doesn't protest the destination, so Charming nods and helps Rumplestiltskin toward the smudge that must be a parked vehicle. Without a word, Belle slings Rumplestiltskin's right arm (the one that had held a crutch and a cane, that worked magic on hundreds of people for both good and ill) over her own shoulders and takes her share of his weight. He wishes he could pretend to strength, could do more than make his legs halfheartedly drag along the ground in a semblance of steps, but he can't, and so he is left without even pride or dignity here at the end. (He tries to tell himself that it's good, that it will only aid in convincing Belle to leave him, but he does not believe himself.)

Rumplestiltskin is silent on the drive to his shop, so Charming fills Belle in on the basics of their time in Neverland (an abbreviated, watered-down version that Rumplestiltskin knows Belle will recognize as the half-truth it is) and asks her about Storybrooke and what occurred during their absence. Rumplestiltskin listens to her story of sieges and confrontations with hundreds of black-suited fanatics and magical shields cast to stand shimmering between them, of speeches and armies of her own led by dwarfs and mice and dogs and birds become men and women and princes and princesses taking up weapons of their own at Belle's behest, and all he can think is that she doesn't need him anymore (if ever she did).

But her hand is warm in his, and she is pressed up close against his side, leaning against him (and propped up by the truck door on his other side, seated, he can take her weight without keeling over), and for the duration of this drive, she is still his to love and hold and cherish. So he listens and he shoves down his fear (because he has only just barely begun to realize it is possible to live without Bae, he does not think he can bear to live without Belle, too) and he realizes (once again, ever and always) just how brave and bold and heroic his Belle is. She is a leader, a princess, a hero to put all the heroes of her stories to shame—and for too long, he has kept her chained to a monster, veiled her glory, tied her to darkness. It is time for her to be set free, to fly unhindered, to shine for everyone, not just for a lonely old beast rattling around the dusty remains of his dark kingdom.

He does his best not to cling when she and Charming help him out of the truck and through the front door of his shop (Belle unlocks it with the key he gave Lacey, as easily, as naturally as if she does it every day), but he knows he fails. He is chafing with embarrassment and the stifled beginnings of resentment as they help him through the front of the shop (he peers through squinted eyes but cannot spot any dust or other sign of his neglect) and into the back. Charming is gentle when he lowers him to the cot (and this is just like last time, only now it's Bae who's gone for good and Belle who's his so transiently, so temporarily). Rumplestiltskin reluctantly lets Belle's hand slip from him, and then he clasps both his empty hands in front of him, missing the cane that gave him something to fiddle with.

Belle and Charming talk over his head for a moment (his pride will not allow him to hear the instructions on what to do with the razor-thin cuts scattered across the entirety of his body, the cracks from where his magic had bled as Pan hovered above him and laughed, backed by Hook's gleeful smirk). He is woefully aware, belatedly, of the rattiness of his clothing, the holes in his pants, the missing jacket and waistcoat, the tattered cuffs of his shirt, the missing buttons from the top, the tie hanging uselessly around his neck. He doesn't feel like Mr. Gold anymore, but then, neither does he feel like Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin was a father kept alive for centuries by sheer devotion to his son and a desperate reliance on dark magic. Mr. Gold was a façade, a quiet man interested in his belongings and his dealings and his power plays. The man who's left now, the man who sits on a cot and counts down the minutes he has left to still have something worth living for—he's someone new. Someone different, but just as weak and powerless and vulnerable as Rumplestiltskin or Mr. Gold. Just as undeserving and selfish.

The tinkling of the bell pulls Rumplestiltskin from his thoughts, and with a blurry perusal of the backroom, he realizes that Charming is gone. Belle is busy over at the table, her hands placing something small and white and glossy on a slightly upraised pedestal.

The chipped cup.

He hopes she'll let him keep it when she leaves him.

But he has no more excuses, no more reasons (only desperate desires) to delay. It's time to let her go. Time to be noble, and selfless, and brave (and he begins to think that these qualities are far too overrated). Time to be alone and fade away into nothing.

"Belle," he says, and she turns instantly. For the first time, he is almost glad for his faded vision, because at least he won't be able to see her expression when he says goodbye (fear and horror and grief, or equally as bad, relief). "There's hardly anything left of me now. The seer told me Henry would lead to my undoing, and she was right. I have no magic, no power, nothing worth anything—I can barely walk, barely see, and I can't even stop my hands from shaking."

"I'm sorry," she interrupts, and he really wishes she wouldn't. This is hard enough as it is.

"Belle," he says again (because he can, because he hasn't been able to say it for so long, because it's still a relief to not have to say _Lacey_). "I'm an old, crippled man, more than ever before, and I have nothing to live for anymore, not without Bae, without...well. Once, I gave you your freedom, but you came back. Once, you left because I wasn't honest with you, but you let me back in. Now…" He's practiced this speech and he knows it backward and forward, but he _wishes_ it were possible for him to miraculously forget the conclusion he's been leading up to. Alas, of all the things that have been taken from him, his memories aren't one of them.

"Now I'm letting you go again," he finally rasps. His eyes slam shut. Blurry vision or not, he doesn't want to witness whatever she does next—whether it be a slap, a derisive snort, a smile, or the door closing behind her as she snatches this opportunity to escape. "You should go. You don't need me, and I…I don't…"

But he can't. He _can't_. He cannot, after what happened the last time, tell her that he doesn't need her, that he doesn't want her, doesn't love her. He cannot give her lies as a parting gift, not after everything that has passed between them.

He wishes he had kissed her before this speech, but he knows he was wise not to. He will not repeat the same mistakes he's already made. He kissed her once, and ended up thinking her dead for decades. He kissed her again, when she came back from the dead, and she left him mere days later. He (almost) kissed her again, at a town line, when his son was still alive and within his reach, and he lost her for far too long, to _Lacey_ and sultry smiles and overpowering perfumes and darkness in eyes made for only light. He's going to lose her again, this time, but this is a good thing, a _better_ loss, and he won't kiss her and risk bringing down something worse upon her. He's doing this _for_ her. The last gift he has to give.

"Rumplestiltskin." The sound of his full name in her lilting voice prompts him to (tentatively, fearfully) open his useless eyes. He sees her, a slender form in blue (and he recognizes that blue, the blue of the coat he gave her when Lacey disappeared to leave Belle in her place), but he can read nothing from her voice. "You want me to leave you?"

There is no right answer to that. There is no truthful _and_ selfless answer to that. So he blinks back tears he refuses to admit are there and whispers, "I want you to be happy. I want you to have _everything_. And I can't give you that. So, instead, I give you your freedom."

"Oh, Rumple," she murmurs, and he wishes he could see just so he could tell whether she's disappointed or exasperated (or if she's truly as compassionate as his traitorous ears tell him she is).

There is silence, after that exhalation, for a very long time. Rumplestiltskin-as-he-used-to-be would have snapped and rent and wounded with his words (his weapons) to drive her away, would have turned to the things in his shop to help him momentarily forget the hurt he'd cause in trying to save her. But _he_ can't do that. She's his Belle, prisoner and caretaker and would-be lover and lost soul and seductress, and he can't hurt her again. But she says nothing either, and that terrifies him. She always knows what to say, always has the right words to salve his wounds and heal his scars. Her silence, on the other hand…he doesn't know what to do with it.

Finally, she moves, stepping forward and kneeling before him. He starts back, but he can't move anywhere without help, so he is trapped (he can't move away from the touch of her hand on his knee, so he is hypnotized to stillness). "I don't want to leave you, Rumple, but…" (His heart freezes within him, turned to sharp ice.) "But I promise that I will consider it on one condition—come with me. Just for the next hour or two. If you come freely, and _listen_ to me, I'll _think_ about leaving—_if_, at the end, you still want me to."

"Belle." The name escapes him before he can catch it back, a breathless, pleading exhalation. But he can't say the other three words that clamor to be let free, so he closes his mouth and tightens his clasped hands in his lap to keep from gathering her to him.

"Promise me?" she asks.

"I promise," he says, because he can't deny her.

It is slow going, without Charming, but Belle matches his steps perfectly, and her shoulders are just the right height for him to lean into her without toppling over, and she is stronger than she looks (always stronger, so much stronger, than him), so they manage to stumble their way out of the back of the shop. Belle helps him into the front seat of, he realizes, his own Cadillac, and when she slides into the driver's seat, he can hear the smile in her voice as she says, "Don't worry, Sneezy taught me how to drive."

Another thing she knows how to do. Another thing he can't do for her anymore. He feels small and petty to be so jealous of such unimportant things, but he has always had so little to offer her that even this minor thing seems like the theft of a precious treasure.

They drive for several moments, and neither of them speak. Rumplestiltskin squints through the windows in vain before giving up and looking down at his blurry hands (and he misses his cane more than seems possible because he has nothing at all to hold onto without it). He can't tell where they are when she finally pulls to a halt and exits the car, crosses to open his door and help him out into the cold air (and he is reminded of his missing suit coat as the wind bites through him, reawakening pains and rattling against the barren hollowness of his bones).

"Here we are," Belle says.

It is the prickle in the air, the tingling at the back of his neck, that alerts him, finally, to their location. It's a crackle, a warning to keep people from coming any nearer the boundary that separates Storybrooke from the rest of this world. When he looks past Belle, he thinks he can see the splash of vibrant, garish orange to mark the spot, and his heart seizes up within him. He knows, theoretically, that there is a shield accompanying that neon line, that it's impossible (again) for him to cross that line (for _Belle_ to cross that line), but theoretical knowledge isn't enough to combat instinctual, primal terror.

"Why," he tries to say, but even his rasp is silent, so he has to pause and swallow and try again, propped up against the car, the metal cold at his back, Belle at his side, watching so quietly. "Why are we here?"

"The town line," she says, confirmation of what he already knows. "I wanted to bring you here to remind you what happened."

"I remember," he says numbly. "I can't forget."

The words come out more ironically than he meant them to, but Belle only lets out a half-chuckle (almost as strained as his own voice). "Yes, but _I_ did. And here," she takes his hand and supports him as she leads him to the edge of the road (he can see it, in his mind's eye, dark with rain, cold with mist, wet with her blood). "Here is where you held me and told me it would be okay and touched me."

He is shaking. Not the tremors left by the cracks and mars and flaws in his body, but a shaking from his very soul, a resonance within his being at this memory that is all too often near the surface of his thoughts, ready to leap out and devour him at the slightest provocation, full of terrible what-ifs and daunting could-haves.

Belle leans slightly into him, her arm wrapped around his waist, and when she turns her face into his neck and lets her breath warm the hollow of his throat, his shaking eases slightly. Her presence, her warmth, her solidness, remind him that she is _Belle_ and here and safe.

"Come on," she whispers, and she helps him back into the car.

"Belle," he starts, but she hushes him.

"We're not done yet," she says, and they drive a familiar route (a route branded into his mind with the lightning-edge of panic and frenzied horror, as he followed an ambulance's flashing lights and fed his fury with the memory of the pirate who stole two of the women he'd loved, and worked with the third to kill Rumplestiltskin in the name of power and vengeance).

He doesn't want to get out of the car when they stop, because this time, he knows where they are. But Belle tugs on his elbow, and he gave his word, so he unfolds himself despite the searing sparks of pain in every joint. Her name almost escapes him again before he grits his teeth and clenches his jaw, and focuses on the thunderous pounding in his head to distract from the sight of the hospital.

She doesn't lead him fully into the hospital (a minor relief; he does not want to be consigned to the care of people who more than likely hold grudges against him for real or imagined slights in the past, and there is nothing they can do for what ails him anyway), but she makes him stand in front of the door and look toward the interior. He can't see anything, of course, but that doesn't matter. Perfect memory is a curse as bad or worse than the one that gave him immortality and magic.

"This is where you followed me," Belle says. "You kissed me here, and called me to remind me of who I was. You brought me our cup, remember? I took care of it, by the way, while we were separated. I carried it with me sometimes, when I missed you too much, but I was very careful with it. I just needed a physical memory, sometimes."

Involuntarily, he wraps his arm around her. It will just make it harder to let go of her when this impromptu journey is over, but he refuses to regret the impulsive hug. He's been where she was, has longed for her embrace and her voice, and he cannot let her suffer that any longer than absolutely necessary. She burrows into him (but does not lean more of her weight on him than he can handle) and rubs her nose against the side of his neck. He forgot how good this felt, how astounding it is, to have someone so close to him, wrapped around him, _needing_ him.

"Come on," she says abruptly, sniffling a bit as she pulls away and ducks her head to hide her tears (she did it often in the Dark Castle; she did it when walking away from him on the harbor before he left for cursed Neverland). "We have one more place."

It's a very short trip, this time, just a few blocks over. He's puzzled, when she helps him out of the car on a long street with brick buildings lined up before him. Exhaustion is threatening to drown him in blanketing currents, but this is important to her (these are his last moments with her), so he forces his spine as straight as it will go, and he looks around because she wants him to, and he tries to figure out where she has brought him.

He notices the sign, with a white blob on it, but cannot see it clearly enough to recognize it until Belle murmurs, "The Rabbit Hole."

Instantly, immediately, Rumplestiltskin stiffens all over, his tremors all but caged completely behind the tension of his muscles. "Why are you taking me to these places?" he demands. Or, well, he _tries_ to demand, but in his wrecked voice, it comes out more as a plea.

"Here's where you followed me and fought for me and won me back," Belle says implacably. "Even when I didn't know you, when I didn't love you, you still loved me."

"Belle," he says yet again. It's all he _can _say. He's seen centuries pass him by, has encountered people of every shape and size and make, and yet still he cannot understand her, cannot predict her, cannot categorize her. She is _Belle_, and that is enough, it is everything, and it is the very reason he can't hold onto her as he so selfishly, so _desperately_ wants to. She can rule Storybrooke and inspire people to follow her and fight off invasions of fanatics intent on wiping out every trace of magic and even drive herself. And he? He is powerless and blind and so frail that even the wind slicing past him can topple him to the ground face-first. He is vulnerable and he has many enemies, and for these and a millions more reasons—namely, that he has never deserved her even in his best moments, before magic and portals and curses, and certainly not now, after murders and near-genocides and manipulations of innocence—he must give her the freedom she so embodies.

Belle sighs, and finally, there is a trace of impatience, frustration in her voice as she turns fully to face him, leaving him slumped against the hood of the Cadillac. "Don't you see, Rumple?" she demands. "I'm just as broken and scarred as you are—maybe my scars are on the inside instead of the outside, but that doesn't mean they're not there. I have been hurt and maimed and torn apart from the inside out, locked away and forgotten, _erased_ and replaced by someone _else_, and through it all, you never left me. You never gave up, never used a desire for _freedom _as an excuse to walk away from the living, breathing pain that I was both to myself and to you. You stayed and you _fought_ for me and you _saved _me! Please," her voice breaks, "_please_, let me do the same thing for you! Let me love you! Let me stay!"

And her hands are on his chest, fingers warm through his frozen chest past the missing buttons of his shirt, then creeping up to his neck, fingers threaded through his loose tie, as she pulls herself closer and closer until he realizes that _he's_ pulling her closer too, his arms around her waist, and only his back against the car is keeping them upright.

"I love you," she whispers, the word-shaped air caressing his lips.

His wife never forgave him his sacrifice and his handicaps, the woman he shared his magic with never saw past power and ambition to love him back, the people he's trusted have all betrayed him at one point or another, and the son he's based his entire life around for hundreds of years is gone forever. But those three words, that breath of air, her voice and her scent and her touch—it's enough to make it all worth it. It's enough to keep him from fading away amongst the useless relics of another world, becoming just another voiceless ghost among many haunting his shop. It's enough to make him smile through the pain burning through his body and the prison that his flesh has become and the bleak existence Bae's death has left for him.

It's _enough_.

"Yes," he says, grants his permission because she's begging him and he cannot deny her (cannot deny his own fragile, lonely heart). "And I love you too."

She half smiles, half sobs, and then her arms are wrapped around his neck and she's holding on as tightly as if for dear life (and maybe she is; maybe she loves him every bit as much as he loves her, mind-boggling as that is to consider). "Don't leave me again," she mumbles against his shirt. "I don't want to leave you. Please, Rumple, don't leave _me_."

"Don't let go of me," he replies (a deal, because that's what he does), and maybe he_ is_ a fool. Maybe he is doomed to repeat his same mistakes over and over again, but he doesn't care. If the world wants to end, it will end whether or not he kisses Belle, and for once, he will take advantage of what's being offered to him.

He's the one who pulls back far enough to duck his head, but it is she who lifts herself up on her toes, who lets her mouth collide with his, warm and moist and as frantic as their first kiss was slow. He can't see her, but he doesn't need to. He can feel her, can taste her, can _sense_ her very soul as his lips play against hers. She loves him, and maybe he thinks she deserves better, but she thinks she deserves _him_—and he _knows_ he doesn't deserve her, but he didn't deserve Bae either and letting go of him had been the greatest mistake he ever made.

So he doesn't let go. He holds onto her with everything he is and he kisses her as if he will never stop, and he only tightens his grip all the more when he feels wave after wave of crackling lightning surge across his form.

When the burst of magic wipes away his scars and stills his tremors and heals his pain and restores the thrill of power coursing through his veins, Rumplestiltskin doesn't even notice. True Love's Kiss can break any curse, but Belle's kiss is worth more than that, so he savors every instant of it and only notices that something is different when he finally draws back for breath.

And opens his eyes.

And sees Belle looking back at him with a wide happy smile, her eyes all blatant silver-blue hope and joy. And love.

And Rumplestiltskin smiles, and kisses her again.

The End


End file.
